The English Football Association Cup was first played for in 1872 and the trophy was made by Martin, Hall and Co. It was 18" high, held a "quart" (two pints!) and stolen on September 11th 1895, from a shop where it was on "display" in Birmingham, the city where the winners, Aston Villa, originated.
Aston Villa were fined £25 by the FA for their lack of security after the club "lent" the cup to their local shoe shop owner who put on show for all to see. They did!! It was never recovered.
In the early days the cup was presented at a reception, indeed the first winners, the Wanderers, received the trophy four weeks later at a dinner held at the Pall Mall restaurant, Charing Cross. Whereas in 1882 the presentation ceremony was first held immediately after the game.
The FA Cup, known as "The Little Tin Idol", worth £20 was stolen from William Shillcock's Boot and Shoe shop 73 Newtown Row, in Birmingham, where it was on display after Aston Villa's Cup Final win on April 20th at the Crystal Palace. Villa beat West Bromwich Albion 1-0. Shillcock was a friend of William McGregor, the founder of the Football League (first competed for in 1888).
A hole on a "lean to" roof (18" x 12") and a set of size 5 footprints was all that was left by who ever carried out the robbery. A £10 reward bore no affect and it was assumed the cup would have been melted down to make silver coins.
The second cup was used until 1910, when it was presented to Lord Kinnaird, the FA's long serving president. He died in 1923 (same year as the FA Cup Final move to Wembley Stadium) and the cup was eventually auctioned in 2005 for £420,000. This was bought by David Gold who placed the cup in the National Football Museum in 2006.
The reason for the change in 1910 was Manchester United's fault. The club was not happy with the trophy that they won in 1909, so they had their own made! (apparently other copies were made in Manchester too). The FA noticed that they did not hold copyright to the original trophy and so had a new cup made by Fattorini and Sons, an Italian migrant family living in Harrogate and owning a factory in Bradford. Needless to say Bradford City won the "first final" in 1911 and carried away the 24 inch high cup.
A smaller replica of this cup was played for in the North Wales Coast FA Cup competition.
The tradition of tying ribbons to the cup handles was first started in 1901...yep, when Spurs won it from the lowly Southern League. The wife of the club's director brought navy and white ribbons with her to the final!
The Fattorini trophy served until 1991. The old cup was battered by use and replaced but the FA provided a heavier version in 2014 made by Thomas Lyte and weighing in at 14 pounds, as below.
alcohol! Sadly those in charge of the hospitality area prior to George Best appearing on the Wogan chat show in September 1990 didn't think along the same lines. When Best appeared on set he was clearly drunk. What followed was certainly memorable television, although for all the wrong reasons. The conspiracy theorists have it that the BBC intentionally plied him with drink to get the outcome that would give a ratings boost to the Wogan show. Whatever the truth it resulted in a sad episode in the troubled life of a player of genius.
Jimmy Greaves perhaps became as well known for his catchphrase It's a funny old game! as he once was for his deadly goalscoring but it wasn't him who first coined the phrase - well not the real him anyway! From 1984 to 1996 Spitting Image was one of the top comedy shows on TV, featuring puppet caricatures of celebrities of the time with Greaves being one of them. Central TV had the idea of having the real Jimmy Greaves interviewed by his Spitting Image puppet and during the interview it was his puppet that first used the phrase. So perhaps not surprisingly it was the puppet who was the brains behind the phrase rather than the man himself. The voice of the puppet was provided by none other than Harry Enfield.
When Alex Ferguson retired from management he obviously used his time wisely as when his autobiography was published in October 2013 it became a record-breaking seller. By selling 115,547 copies of the book in its first week it became the UK's quickest selling non-fiction book since records began in 1998. Tony Blair's memoirs had only managed to sell 92,000 copies in its first week while even the top Royal best-seller was bettered - Paul Burrell's A Royal Duty only sold 77,000 copies. The only other football book in the top five at the time was David Beckham's autobiography My Side in number 4 spot with sales of 86,000 although to be fair the previous record holder, with 112,000 of first-week sales, did have a football connection. It was Delia, of Norwich City fame, with a cook book!
